Spring has sprung

It's not officially spring for another few days, but today has leapt straight past spring and into summer, a balmy 19c with blue skies and a fresh breeze. I spent the afternoon in the garden pottering about and am now taking a well-earned break.


The plum (or greengage or whatever it is) tree beside the chicken house is in full bloom and looking very pretty. We got tons of fruit off it last year but didn't know that it was edible, so most of it rotted. We'll make better use of it this year!


The daffodils are out in full bloom at the moment too, and provide lovely splashes of colour here and there. And the tree that smells like chocolate (a boxleaf azara, I believe) is blooming again! The flowers on this are tiny yellow things, barely visible, but they smell like chocolate or cocoa butter when the sun is shining. It's just beautiful.

Things New Zealand doesn't have (Part 7)

Here's something New Zealand doesn't have, which I don't miss: pennies. And tuppences. And five-pence pieces. Not that it would be pennies here anyway, since we use dollars and cents, but there are no coins to represent anything smaller than 10c. The 1c and 2c coins were ditched in 1990 and the 5c coins in 2006:

On 31st July 2006, the Reserve Bank of New Zealand introduced a new set of smaller and lighter coins to replace the existing 10, 20 and 50 cent pieces. The 5 cent piece was phased out of circulation, while recovery of the old coinage began.

The strange thing is that prices still have odd numbers, such as $1.58 or $3.99 - you just can't pay that amount if you're using cash. Cashiers round the total up or down using a system called Swedish rounding. If you're paying with EFTPOS, credit card, or bank transfer, then you can use the exact amount.

Here are the coins we do have - 10c, 20c, 50c, $1, and $2.

Even the 10c coins rarely get used and just accumulate in my purse. From time to time I clear it out and dump the shrapnel into my piggy bank or into the vending machine at work, but other than that they don't get much use. With this being a largely cashless society, I expect it's only a matter of time before we lose the smallest denomination that we have right now.